James Fallows notes that inequality makes the illusion difficult to maintain, but insists it’s worth believing in the American Dream all the same:
In these circumstances, does it make sense for America to maintain the ideal, or myth, that we are a middle-class society? I believe it does, even though this concept may make it harder for us to perceive or discuss the nation’s genuine and growing inequalities. It remains worthwhile, because most of the elements of middle-class identity encourage traits America needs.
….
[T]o be middle class is to believe that any goal should be within reach. Success takes effort, and it depends on luck. But a long string of ascents from middle-class-or-below origins, from the Wright brothers and Henry Ford a century ago to Steve Jobs and Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor in our day, suggests a possibility rare in other societies. We are better off believing that this is still the American way.
Y’ask me? If the Horatio Alger myth of rags-to-riches is all the American Dream’s got going for it, well, it’s in trouble. Because for every Jay-Z there are countless failures or never-trieds, people in circumstances both comfortable and dire. And the one-in-10-million who ascends to unfathomable levels of wealth, she’s still just one out of 10 million. That’s a shitty deal.
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